Application vendors distribute applications such as web applications and Business-to-Business (B2B) applications to on-line businesses. The on-line businesses typically run the applications on one or more servers for operating web pages on a domain controlled by the on-line business. The applications are used by the on-line businesses to provide shopping cart functionality on the web pages, to allow product configuration functionality on the web pages, to facilitate shipping through the web pages, to check pricing, etc. The application vendor usually promises some minimum level of performance for the applications, particularly with regard to response time, number of simultaneous users, etc. This promise of minimum performance is referred to, or incorporated into, a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and may or may not be memorialized in a legal instrument.
Once the applications are being used, the parties generally attempt to benchmark or otherwise measure the performance of the applications for determining whether the performance expectations are met. Current methods include pinging the servers that run the applications as well as other techniques. Generally these current techniques are accurate only when customers of the web pages communicate using certain HyperText Transfer Protocols (HTTP) protocols, or only when each application is associated with a different Universal Resource Locator (URL). The disclosure that follows solves these and other problems.